BA thesis in Informatics, Digital Design Spring term 2019 Menu anchor interactors in mobile website contexts The perceived usability of menu navigation on three different types of websites Annika Madejska and Alexander Persson Faculty of Business/Department of Design Författare Annika Madejska och Alexander Persson Titel Menyinteraktörer i mobila webbsidekontexter Upplevd användbarhet av menynavigation på tre olika typer av webbsidor Handledare Montathar Faraon Examinator Kerstin Ådahl Sammanfattning 2018 fanns det 3,6 miljarder mobila internetanvändare i världen, vilket visar att digitala designers måste tackla navigationsmöster och menyinteraktörer till smarta telefoner och små skärmar tidigt i sina projekt. Då användarnöjdhet är avgörande för en webbsidas framgång, och då en lyckad navigationsprocess genom ett menysystem är nödvändig för användarnöjdheten, är menysystemet en nyckelkomponent i gränssnittet. Den här studien avser tre typer av menyinteraktörer (obeständig dold meny, beständig toppmeny och navigationshub), på tre typer av webbsidor (enskild tjänsteleverantör, varumärkessajt och tjänsteregister). Målet var att undersöka hur webbsidans typ påverkar användarens inställning till menyinteraktörer. Den teoretiska basen utgörs av tidigare forskning på menysystem i grafiska användargränssnitt. Studien genomfördes med hjälp av ett frågeformulär där bilder av tre olika menyinteraktörer på tre olika typer av webbsidor presenterades för deltagarna. De ombads att på en Likertskala från ett till sju bedöma hur hjälpsam den enskilda menyinteraktören uppfattas. Därtill ombads de att förtydliga sitt omdöme i ett kvalitativt svar. De viktigaste resultaten från studien visar att användare föredrar menyinteraktörer som visar flera navigationslänkar och det finns indikationer på att den beständiga toppmenyinteraktören fungerar bäst för webbsidor av typen tjänsteregister, medan sidor av typen enskild tjänsteleverantör och varumärkessajt gynnas av en navigationshub. Resultaten visar emellertid också vikten av att studera användargränssnittskomponenter i deras fullständiga gränssnittskontext, eftersom helheten påverkar den uppfattade användbarheten hon menyinteraktören. Keywords meny, navigation, menyinteraktör, menysystem, digital design, användbarhet, användarupplevelse, smarta telefoner, mobila användargränssnitt 2 Authors Annika Madejska and Alexander Persson Title Menu anchor interactors in mobile website contexts The perceived usability of menu navigation on three different types of websites Supervisor Montathar Faraon Examiner Kerstin Ådahl Abstract In 2018, there were 3.6 billion mobile internet users worldwide, which shows that digital designers have to tackle navigational patterns and menu anchor interactors for smartphone-sized screens early in their projects. As user satisfaction is crucial for the success of a website, and as successful navigation through a menu system is imperative to user satisfaction, the menu system is a key component in the UI. This study concerned three types of menu anchor interactors in smartphone UIs (Transient, Top persistent, and Navigation hub), on three website types (Single service, Brand, and Service directory). The goal was to investigate what influence the website type has on the user’s preferences of menu anchor itneractors. The theoretical base is previous research on menu systems in graphical UIs. The study was done by a questionnaire where the participants were presented images of three different menu anchor interactors on three different website types, and asked to score the assumed helpfulness of the menu anchor interactor from one to seven on a Likert scale. In addition, they were asked to clarify their scoring in a qualitative response. The key findings are that users prefer menu anchor interactors that display several navigation links, and that there are indications that the Top persistent menu anchor interactor works best on the Service directory website type, while Single service and Brand website types seem to benefit from a Navigation hub. However, the results also show the importance of studying UI components in their full UI context, as the whole UI affects the perceived usability of the menu anchor interactor. Keywords menu, navigation, menu anchor interactor, menu systems, digital design, usability, user experience, smart phones, mobile user interfaces 3 Table of Contents 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 6 1.1. Scope and research objective ................................................................................. 7 1.2. Delimitations .......................................................................................................... 8 1.3. Definitions .............................................................................................................. 8 1.4. Thesis structure ...................................................................................................... 9 2. Literature review ................................................................................................................... 10 2.1. Menu systems in digital user interfaces ............................................................... 10 2.1.1. Desktop navigation ................................................................................................. 11 2.1.2. Mobile navigation ................................................................................................... 14 2.2. Web usability on mobile devices ......................................................................... 17 2.3. Classification of website types ............................................................................. 20 2.4. Summary .............................................................................................................. 22 3. Methodology .......................................................................................................................... 23 3.1. Search terms ......................................................................................................... 24 3.2. Research design .................................................................................................... 24 3.3. Participants ........................................................................................................... 26 3.4. Materials ............................................................................................................... 26 3.4.1 Navigation prototypes ............................................................................................. 26 3.4.2 Questionnaire ........................................................................................................... 29 3.5 Procedure ................................................................................................................ 29 3.6 Ethical considerations ...................................................................................................... 30 4. Results and analysis .............................................................................................................. 31 4.1 Single service website ...................................................................................................... 31 4.2 Brand website ................................................................................................................... 36 4.3 Service directory website ................................................................................................. 41 4.4 Demographic data ............................................................................................................ 46 4.5 Summary .......................................................................................................................... 48 5. Discussion ............................................................................................................................. 50 5.1. Purpose and goal of the study ......................................................................................... 50 5.2. Anchor interactor preferences ......................................................................................... 50 4 5.3 Methodological considerations ........................................................................................ 54 6. Conclusions and future work ................................................................................................. 55 6.1 Concluding remarks ......................................................................................................... 55 6.2 Future work ...................................................................................................................... 56 References .................................................................................................................................. 58 APPENDIX A ............................................................................................................................ 61 Questionnaire .................................................................................................................... 61 5 1. Introduction Since smartphones with touch screens, downloadable software, and access to the internet were launched, the need for websites to be accessible and usable on small screens has increased rapidly, which is demonstrated by the growing number of mobile internet users. In 2018, there were 3.6 billion mobile internet users worldwide (GSMAssociation,